iBeacon Development on iOS Ole Begemann

Agenda Working with iBeacons on iOS Explore iBeacons at Betahaus Discussion/Q&A

What are iBeacons?

Based on Bluetooth LE Very simple Passive

Advertising Permanent Advertising 100500 ms intervals Beacons dont see other devices Range: 50-100 m (510 m indoors)

Beacons transmit 3 numbers Proximity UUID Major Minor

Proximity UUID 010A6F6A-DD12-4B07-A56C-EBA3BCF7136A Usually the same for all beacons in one installation 128 bits is enough to be globally unique

Major and Minor 0...65,535 Congure in way that makes sense for your installation

www.open-location-berlin.com

iBeacon APIs

iBeacon APIs Core Location (and not Core Bluetooth) Region Monitoring Ranging API is extremely simple

Region Monitoring

Region Monitoring Detect when a beacon comes in or out of range Monitor a single beacon or a group Can be used in the background

Always Check Availability and Authorization [CLLocationManager authorizationStatus] [CLLocationManager isMonitoringAvailableForClass: [CLBeaconRegion class]]

CLBeaconRegion identifier proximityUUID major minor notifyOnEntry notifyOnExit notifyEntryStateOnDisplay

Region Monitoring NSUUID *uuid = [[NSUUID alloc] initWithUUIDString:@"F0018B9B-7509-4C31-A905-1A27D39C003C"]; CLBeaconRegion *region = [[CLBeaconRegion alloc] initWithProximityUUID:uuid identifier:@"My Region"]; ]; [self.locationManager startMonitoringForRegion:region];

Region Monitoring: Delegate Methods - (void)locationManager:(CLLocationManager *)manager didEnterRegion:(CLRegion *)region - (void)locationManager:(CLLocationManager *)manager didExitRegion:(CLRegion *)region - (void)locationManager:(CLLocationManager *)manager monitoringDidFailForRegion:(CLRegion *)region withError:(NSError *)error

Region Monitoring [self.locationManager stopMonitoringForRegion:region]; [self.locationManager requestStateForRegion:region];

Proximity Ranging

Ranging Continuous updates (every second) Monitor proximity and (estimated) distance Does not work in the background

Check Availability [CLLocationManager isRangingAvailable]

Proximity Ranging [self.locationManager startRangingBeaconsInRegion:region]; [self.locationManager stopRangingBeaconsInRegion:region];

Proximity Ranging: Delegate Methods - (void)locationManager:(CLLocationManager *)manager didRangeBeacons:(NSArray *)beacons inRegion:(CLBeaconRegion *)region - (void)locationManager:(CLLocationManager *)manager rangingBeaconsDidFailForRegion:(CLBeaconRegion *)region withError:(NSError *)error

CLBeacon proximityUUID major minor proximity accuracy rssi

proximity CLProximityImmediate (centimeters) CLProximityNear (< 23 m) CLProximityFar CLProximityUnknown

accuracy Indicates the one sigma horizontal accuracy in meters. Use this property to dierentiate between beacons with the same proximity value. Do not use it to identify a precise location for the beacon. Not a distance estimate!

rssi Received signal strength Measured in decibels

Demos

Museum Uses ranging to display information about a piece of art when the associated beacon is in immediate or near proximity.

BEACONinside github.com/beaconinside/ BEACONinside-SDK-iOS Uses the BEACONinside SDK (built on top of Core Location APIs)

oleb.net/les/ibeacon-workshop.zip

Common Problems

Region Monitoring Region Exit is not immediate (15 seconds or more) Enter and Exit events can take up to 15 minutes in the background region.notifyEntryStateOnDisplay = YES http://developer.radiusnetworks.com/2013/11/13/ ibeacon-monitoring-in-the-background-and- foreground.html

Ranging Intermittent signal loss Signal strength is not a reliable measure for distance Apps should apply signal smoothing

Creating iBeacons

Turn your device into a beacon CLBeaconRegion *region = [[CLBeaconRegion alloc] initWithProximityUUID:... major:... minor:... identifier:...]]; NSDictionary *peripheralData = [region peripheralDataWithMeasuredPower:nil]; self.peripheralManager = [[CBPeripheralManager alloc] initWithDelegate:self queue:nil]; [self.peripheralManager startAdvertising:peripheralData];

Core Bluetooth

Core Bluetooth Used to actively connect to Bluetooth LE devices Devices oer services and characteristics Not required for iBeacons, but many iBeacons oer additional functionality via Core Bluetooth

Agenda Working with iBeacons on iOS Explore iBeacons at Betahaus Discussion/Q&A

Agenda Working with iBeacons on iOS Explore iBeacons at Betahaus Discussion/Q&A

Limitations on iOS Scanning for beacons with unknown UUIDs is not possible

App Store Policy Not permitted to expose UUIDs to users Makes it dicult to write apps that work with the users own beacons

Documentation

developer.apple.com/ibeacon/

Thank you @olebegemann ole@oleb.net oleb.net